SOUTHERN AFRICA ASSESSMENT

Abstract

The year 2005 is being touted as the one in which Africa stakes its claim on the international agenda, topping the list of priorities for the Group of Eight (G8) the European Union (EU) and, increasingly, US foreign policy. Indeed the continent has received better media attention in recent months, stimulated by reinvigorated peace processes and the G7’s agenda for poverty eradication in Africa that is led by the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, poverty and hunger still characterise life for most of the continent’s inhabitants who are denied agency over their livelihoods as a result of a complex mix of reinforcing structural, political and environmental factors. Commenting on recent initiatives for debt relief for African countries, World Bank’s James Wolfensohn said he hopes that ‘there is a recognition now on behalf of the rich world that they cannot continue to be rich if the world is destabilised by poverty’.1 The following pages identify HIV/AIDS and food insecurity (particularly in rural areas) as the two most severe and interrelated humanitarian issues currently facing southern Africa. It is argued that the current situation must be contextualised as an ‘entangling crisis’ of climatic factors, chronic poverty, the failure of economic and political governance, and the impact of HIV/AIDS on the ability of individuals to respond independently. The chains of poverty